


Evil Author's Day 2016: Tips & Tricks

by Moirae_Maat



Category: Naruto
Genre: Evil Author's Day, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-15
Updated: 2016-02-15
Packaged: 2018-05-21 00:40:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6031879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moirae_Maat/pseuds/Moirae_Maat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Evil Author's Day Post. The in-progress sequel to "Lord Hokage":</p><p>The Rookie 9 went back in time to the Chunin Exams, but everyone under the sun seems to want to interrupt their planning and it’s getting rather annoying.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Evil Author's Day 2016: Tips & Tricks

**Author's Note:**

> Don't own, un-beta'd, and unfinished. It's been sitting on my hard drive for a while now and I figured I'd post it for EAD. Enjoy!

Naruto flicked a discrete set of signals and the Konoha 9 scattered as soon as they left Hokage Tower. They’d meet again in three days at the usual spot.

.~.~.~.

“How did you all get here?” Naruto asked as he collapsed against Sasuke’s tree, eyes closed and both hands pressed to his forehead. The Sage of the Sixth Paths only knew how they’d made the trip with him – the seal had only been meant for him. They’d given their lives to ensure he could come back and somehow they’d traveled back in time with him.

“A suicide run,” Hinata admitted lowly as she stirred her tea with a careful application of chakra and passed the cup to Naruto.

“The hive cannot exist without the queen,” Shino added from behind his collar.

Naruto frowned at that comment but paused when Shikamaru unsealed a shogi board.

“We had just broken the Statue when the ritual went into effect,” the Nara added as he set a shogi piece down and looked into his Hokage’s eyes. “Whether or not it worked, we were taking that cursed statue out one way or another.”

“We took eleven of damn resurrected bastards with us,” Kiba added as he plopped down near the group, grimly self-satisfied. “If you take ‘em by surprise, it’s possible to off a few of the over-powered psychos before they even notice you’re there.”

“We were going to die anyway,” Ino added as she pressed a hand to Naruto’s arm. “Whether or not the seal worked, our lives were forfeit and we weren’t going to waste them needlessly.”

“Dorobou was re-elected,” Sasuke said flatly as he settled on the branch comfortably and pulled out his newly re-obtained sword. Orochimaru kept Kusunagi in despicable shape considering how rare the damn thing was; it’d take him the rest of the day to get a proper edge back. “He declared you missing and had us watched. The replacement managed to distract them for the split second required for us to clear the walls.”

“The bastard had the damn Statue out in the open again, just sitting there, taunting us, waiting to seal Kurama inside the moment you showed up,” Kiba bit out as Akamaru nuzzled into his side.

“We couldn’t turn down such a clear invitation, now could we?” Sakura added with a vicious grin that looked oddly out of place on her young face. “And he asked so nicely.”

“One must remember their manners,” Hinata agreed serenely as she passed tea to the group. “It would have been rude not to accept.”

Naruto gave a small sideways grin. “His invitations come so rarely, it really would have been a pity to refuse.”

“Any thought to issuing our own invitation?” Sasuke mused as he slid the sharpening stone down the length of his sword.

“Not yet,” the blond jinchuriki replied as he leaned over Shikamaru’s shogi board. “Not just yet. We have two other problems to take care of first.”

“Three, Amaterasu, if it pleases you,” Sasuke interrupted. “Dorobou deserves to die for what he did.”

Naruto frowned at the nickname, but nodded in response to Shikamaru’s raised eyebrow and the Nara turned a shogi piece labeled ‘Megane’ black. “One down, two to go.”

“One at a time,” Sakura counseled carefully as she wreathed her hands in healing chakra and set them on Naruto’s leg.

The poison Hinata had decided to start with was already being stopped by the Kyuubi’s healing factor. Good to finally have it confirmed that Naruto actually didn’t need to build up immunity to poisons; last time around Jiraya had fed him so many different poisons on their three year trip that it was impossible to know if his immunity to every toxin and venom Hinata knew was a result of the pervert’s experiments or Kyuubi’s ability.

“Did your fieldtrip go well, Sasuke?” Naruto asked solicitously as he accepted a new cup of poisoned tea from Hinata.

“Beyond all doubt,” Sasuke said with a smirk as he ran a finger along his blade. Better. “Your blessing burns seven days and seven nights even in the darkest realms.”

“Even his ability could not survive such a gift,” Ino said with a serious face before breaking out into giggles.

“You’ve got to teach me a jutsu that can do that,” Kiba added as he petted Akamaru. “I’ve wanted something that could burn like that since I saw you do it for the first time back home.”

“You set it up so it’d look like it was Chuugi didn’t you?” Naruto gave an exasperated sigh. Those two had some serious issues. “At least we know the blasted eye came through fine. The damn thing really is all mental isn’t it?”

“He already had my records in hand when I arrived,” Sasuke evaded. “I merely scattered yours around his burning corpse. Geijutsuka shouldn’t be too surprised considering Chuugi’s hunting for Kurama and everyone knows you’re his jinchuriki.” The dark-haired teen smirked. “Besides, aniki’s never liked sycophants or snakes and Aka never names his spies.”

“That explains the crazy rush to the hospital by the ANBU,” Sakura muttered absently as she checked Naruto’s system for the second poison and possible interactions between the toxins.

“Avoiding them the past two days has been a pain,” Chouji added as he started to form a miniature landscape from the earth in front of him.

“It’s possible to seal that fire of yours.” Naruto frowned. Jiraya could do it easily enough and Naruto had had some fun in the future sealing that crazy black fire into explosive tags. Sasuke hadn’t liked that much. “And how many times do I have to tell you to stop calling me that?”

Sakura set a hand on Naruto’s shoulder. “Amaterasu holds pride of place in the pantheon; how could we call you anything other than ‘that which illuminates the heavens’?”

Naruto averted his eyes, still unused to the reverence from his yearmates. He had done nothing to deserve their praise and still could not understand how he became the center of their world. Sasuke he could sort-of understand – the Uchiha felt indebted to him for never giving up on him and eventually dragging him back from Orochimaru’s clutches – and that mess with Itachi – but that was best forgotten. 

Naruto suddenly felt like banging his head on the ground; he’d have to deal with the Sasuke-Itachi mess all over again because the two of them were stubborn idiots that couldn’t manage to see eye-to-eye even when they were fighting for the same goal. Sometimes he really wished he’d managed to force reconciliation between them before everything went to hell in a hand basket.

At least none of the Akatsuki would be around until after the Chunin Exams, but Orochimaru was certainly available and removing him would get rid of that entire Edo Tensei fiasco that Madara and Kabuto had started. Naruto could mitigate both the controlling seals and the original resurrection, but getting those seals in place was more hassle than it was worth. It was faster and safer to kill them than to free them, for all that he wished otherwise. 

That was one good side to Sasuke’s visit to the hospital: one of the two people able of using that seal and jutsu combination was gone and only Orochimaru was left.

Naruto tipped his head to the side with a frown. “Sasuke, did Hebi-ero find or invent the Edo Tensei?”

“He modified the control seals,” Sasuke confirmed, “but the original resurrection wasn’t his.”

“Senju Tobirama was the first author of the jutsu,” Sakura interjected. “And I picked up the original copy from the Hokage tower earlier today.”

The pinkette handed over a scroll to her Hokage. “I’ve memorized it, for all the good it’ll do me, but burn it once you’re done.” 

Naruto nodded absently as he unrolled the scroll and began to read.

“Well,” Sakura continued vaguely as she refocused on Naruto’s leg, “maybe let Sasuke see it first, then burn it.”

Naruto paused and looked up at Sasuke. “Just to double-check, you can recreate any seal you see, right?”

“The standing order for any Uchiha before the massacre was to memorize any seal and jutsu they saw and bring them back to the village. The jutsu could be shared without too much hassle, but cosmetic copies of all the seals were given to Seal Masters for deconstruction.” Sasuke shrugged. “I can provide a superficial copy, but the order of the brushstrokes, the layering, the activation scheme, possible minimization, that’s all unknown.”

Naruto leaned back against the tree with a sigh. “So Tsuki could have seen it before and deconstructed it. Damn.”

Ino paused in her knitting. “No one has ever seen or felt him use it. According to everything we found, Megane was the one behind the resurrected army and Tsuki had Shirokuro contribute the white clones.”

“Just when we thought we were down to one,” Kiba set fire to the small figure of himself in Chouji’s model, “we’re back to two bastards out there that can use that blasted jutsu.”

The Akimichi flicked out a hand to put out the fire before adding a copy of the Chunin Exam stadium to his model of Konoha.

Shino looked down at the model. “The matches this year will be interesting.”

“They’re certainly different,” Ino observed as she added a second thread to her work. Her control had been lacking in the match against Sakura and it was time to remedy that.

“The final round match ups are all politics,” Naruto commented absently as he fiddled with a seal. “They say it’s random, but there’s some delicate seal-work on those slips of paper. It’s all plotted out before-hand and the rest is for show. An impressive show, but a show none the less.”

Sakura sighed. “They did this our first time around too, didn’t they?”

Naruto nodded. “Probably. Thankfully first round fights are never against teammates, but given so many Konoha Genin are involved, we’re guaranteed to fight other members of the Kyuu-Ha. Add in the three Suna Genin and at least one of them is going to advance to the second round because we can’t be accused of stacking the deck.”

“But matching up Hinata and Gaara? They’ve got to be crazy!” Kiba looked up from where he’d prodded Chouji into showing Akamaru one of the Inuzuka’s favorite fire moves from the future. Akamaru hadn’t been able to come back with them, but he knew what worked and what didn’t now, so getting his partner up to speed shouldn’t be too hard. Add in that scroll from the compound and it’ll be a cinch.

Naurto winced. “Hiashi doesn’t care if Hinata gets killed – sorry Hinata, but the Sage himself knows he favors your sister as clan head – and none of the other clans would give up an heir. No one would expect him to fight his siblings, so of course Hinata got Gaara, which in turn is one of two possible guaranteed passes for the Suna shinobi.”

“Kankuro versus Chouji is a good matchup because the fight would be able to go either way depending on how he uses puppets and Chouji uses multisize and earth manipulation. It gives puppet boy a decent chance because he’d be badly matched against any of the other competitors. I might have been a decent match, but they paired me with Temari because she’ll be able to blow away my clones easily by floating on that fan of hers and they really don’t want to see me advance, therefore leaving a another virtually-guaranteed pass for a Suna nin. Either way, only one of Suna nin will make it to the finals because the winner of Gaara’s fight will face the winner of my fight and only one can advance further.”

“Shouldn’t you be trying to make friends with Gaara right now?”

“He once told me that I’d snapped him out of his old mindset in the only way he would be able to understand,” Naruto answered obliquely. “Anything else wouldn’t work without a lot more time and some very contrived circumstances. Someone else could try if they want.”

The rest of the Konoha 9 exchanged incredulous glances as the blond kept working. 

“Some speeches are just better coming from you,” Sakura finally said as she patted Naruto’s leg. “No one else has the same impact.”

“I think Hinata could probably fix Neji by now, but I’ll make sure to stop by and talk to him soon. He really needs to get over that obsession with fate before someone figures out how to use it against him.”

“I think that particular speech should come from you, Naruto-kun” Hinata said pleasantly as she focused on her small sake cup, milky white tints slowly extending through the clear liquid. “Neji-nii-san is like Uchiha-san in that he usually doesn’t like to talk to people who’ve beaten him, but you’ve always been a special case.”

Sasuke gave a “hn” in response and Sakura prodded Naruto into explaining the rest of the final round Chunin Exam match ups.

“Sasuke,” Naruto grinned up at the Uchiha before going back to his seal, “well, Sasuke they’ll want to showcase as the last Uchiha, so they’ll try to give him what they consider the easiest path to the final round that will still let him demonstrate his skills to earn promotion. They won’t be able to give him one of the Suna Genin, but have to be careful not to insult the clan that his Konoha opponent comes from. Shikamaru’s smart enough to out-think Sasuke given enough time and incentive, but Sasuke’s undeniably more powerful than Shika, so while Shika will demonstrate his suitability for Chunin in the match, Sasuke will probably win due to time constraints. He’ll go on to face the winner of Chouji’s fight, which they would consider an easy win and a way for him to advance to the finals.”

“Okay, but me and Shino-kun?”

“You’re another even matchup; his bugs could possibly drain you before you could knock him out and most medic nin have a hard time actually manipulating Aburame bodies because the chikaku absorb all the chakra from a non-elemental jutsu before it’s completed.”

Naruto reached over and passed Sakura a complex seal. “Test this for me?”

The pink-haired ninja activated the seal and ran the dark green chakra through her fingers contemplatively before applying it to Naruto leg.

“Better?” Naruto asked curiously as he watched. 

Sakura gave a decisive nod. “One more run through and it’ll be better than having another medic do the feed.”

Naruto took the seal back and titled his head to the side in thought before scribbling something around the outside of the seal and passing it back to the medic.

Sakura flicked it on and smiled. “Close to perfect as you can get.”

“It’ll get a little clearer when it’s actually finished.” Naruto shrugged as he took it back to create a final copy.

“Tsunade-taichou will be pleased when she gets here,” Hinata commented pleasantly as she mixed a new tea for the group. “Especially if certain things repeat themselves.”

“Speaking of Tsunade-taichou, you still remember how to create those three seals, yeah?” Ino asked as she eyed Naruto’s newest contribution to the field of shinobi medicine.

“The earlier you do them, the better, right?” Sakura commented absently as she stopped monitoring Naruto and slipped off her shirt.

Naruto swept his eyes around the group as everyone began to pull off their shirts and rearrange bindings. “You really want those again?” 

Sasuke dropped to the ground with his shirt in one hand. “Where do you want the blood?”

“They may be more hindrance than help until they’re charged,” Shikamaru agreed as he eyed a shogi piece, “but they’re worth the trouble.”

“They’ve only ever helped,” Chouji added as he tossed a clean, wet rag to the Nara and grabbed another to help Ino clean her back for the seal application.

“They are useful,” Shino confirmed as he removed his coat.

“You’re sure?” Naruto asked again as he offered a shallow bowl to Sasuke. “You know how much I’ll need.”

“Of course we’re sure.” Kiba shrugged as he grabbed another rag and began to clean his dog. “You still remember that set for Akamaru?”

Naruto nodded as he carefully mixed his blood with ink in a deep bowl. Sasuke’s blood slid cleanly out of the saucer and into the mix as he pulled out a new brush. The Uchiha settled down facing away from Naruto as the blond settled in to paint a new set of seals across Sasuke’s back.

“All three?” Naruto asked as he wet his brush.

Sasuke looked over his shoulder and raised an eyebrow at the Uzumaki.

“Yeah, yeah,” Naruto began the first seal with a steady hand. “I’m going.”

The blond blanked out everything around him except Sasuke’s back and the three seals he was inking onto the skin, fully immersing himself in their careful creation. 

“All of you?” Naruto asked when he’d finished with Sasuke’s seals and looked up to see every member of the group carefully spilling blood into one of Hinata’s thin sake saucers.

“My favorite techniques are chakra-intensive,” Kiba explained with a sheepish grin as he offered his hand for Sakura to heal.

“The last seal saved everyone’s life at least once,” the pink-haired medic contributed as Hinata cleaned the bowl and brush Naruto had used for Sasuke’s seals.

“One at a time,” Naruto said with a fond smile as he poured more ink and blood into the bowl before carefully adding Sakura’s saucer of blood.

.~.~.~.

Since he was young, Shikamaru has always heard adults claim he is more than simply smart, he’s a verifiable – if lazy – genius, because he could see the hidden currents under the still surface, could see how the raindrops of people’s actions created ripples and waves, how those waves reflected and interacted to form the patterns of the world. They said he has no peer, that he was matchless in his strategy, but Shikamaru has known that’s not true since the moment Naruto pulled his first prank at the Academy.

Shikamaru was said to think outside the box, but Naruto did not even know the box existed and the Nara would have it no other way. For Naruto, every action left a drop of ink until people painted patterns across the world, malleable designs Naruto couldn’t help but see and change as he pleased, the same way the blond invented impossible seals at the drop of a hat.

Any one of the seals being painted across their backs could be considered the accomplishment of a lifetime, much less the stunning series of swirls and symbols that had brought them back in time. And Shikamaru had a theory about that, about what had really happened to bring them back in time, but it wasn’t fully developed yet. Better to have everything firmly in place before he broached the subject with his Hokage.

There was no doubt in his mind Naruto was better than his teacher, better than his father, better even than Madara who had hundreds of years to practice, so the fact that the eight of them had joined their Hokage was suspicious. True, there had been no way to test the seal before it’s use and Naruto claimed it was inspired and empowered by the Kyuubi, but it was still strange.

“You didn’t mean to come here, did you?” Shikamaru said, his tone turning the question into a statement.

“No, I was aiming for something earlier,” Naruto admitted with a sigh as he leaned back against the tree. “When I entered the Academy at the absolute latest.”

Shino nodded. “Six years would have certainly been enough time.”

Naruto carefully cleaned his brush and bowl. “Yeah, it would have been a little more natural for the bastards to drop off the face of the earth over a decade and I could have worked my way up to Tsuki eventually. His patterns are pretty obvious when you get rid of all the other distractions.”

Ino paused in her knitting. “But you entered the Academy two years ahead of us, didn’t you?”

“I had two more years in the Academy, yeah, but I graduated at age 12 just like everyone else.” Naruto stretched and settled back against the tree with a clean piece of paper.

Shikamaru set his shogi piece down as everything clicked. Eight years, eight people, eight biju.

.~.~.~.

No one actually looked up when a new shinobi entered their clearing and stood there expecting to be noticed. He surveyed the group from behind his mask and couldn’t help but think it odd that the Uzumaki was rather prominently at the exact center of the Genin group.

“Danzo-sama requests your presence, Uzumaki-san,” the oddly-masked ANBU finally said in an abnormally bland tone.

The jinchuriki simply ignoring the newcomer in order to keep doodling on a ragged piece of paper, prompting the Root ANBU to take a step towards the blonde boy.

The ANBU promptly froze in place as a kunai landed mere millimeters from the tip of his foot and followed the weapon’s trajectory up to find the Uchiha idly using a whetstone to sharpen a long sword from his position on a tree branch above the lounging Uzumaki.

Naruto rolled over at the distinctive sound of Sasuke’s kunai flick, blue chakra flickering around the edges of his fingers as he looked up.

The kid flicked a glance at the foreign shinobi before shifting to rest his head on a nearby tree root and playing with the chakra hovering at his fingers.

The Root member took another step forward only to find himself pinned by Sasuke’s glare.

“Not quite as good as they were,” Naruto said absently as he flicked another glance at the shinobi and formed a mini-Rasengan. The blond then proceeded to roll the compressed ball of chakra around his fingers before tossing it to his other hand and continuing the exercise. “Go ’head Sasuke.”

Sasuke smirked and carefully set down his whetstone before jumping down from the tree with an unsheathed Kusanagi. “My pleasure Amaterasu-sama.”

Naruto flicked the mini-Rasengan at the back of Sasuke’s head in reaction, the dark-haired shinobi dodging the small projectile as expected. The ANBU watched the bright chakra sphere pass through two trees and burrow into a third before his attention was required to dodge the sword intending to slice down his arm and render it useless.

The Root member directed all of his attention to avoiding a sword that appeared not to just slash, but burn on contact, but couldn’t help peripherally noticing that the Hyuuga seemed to be making tea for the group as the Uchiha took him apart one cut at a time.

“Leave Ino something to work with,” Sakura reminded Sasuke absently as she accepted a cup of tea from Hinata and passed another to Kiba. “This is the milder lionfish poison from Wave’s coast, right? I want to monitor how it affects Naruto before you synthesize that one water snake poison with the 50% mortality rate, and then I want to monitor how Naruto’s system handles that particular poison before we try to build up immunity to it. Mist likes it too much to not have an immunity, but it’s too fatal not to monitor carefully.”

.~.~.~.

“Hey baa-chan.”

“You will address Tsunade-sama properly de–” one of the councilors started to say before he registered the kunai pressed to his throat by an emotionless Uchiha and a cold touch on his back from one of the other genin.

Sakura gave a saccharine smile. “Amaterasu Naruto-sama can call Tsunade-taichou whatever he so pleases.”

The famous medic nin ignored the odd byplay in favor of looking the blonde genin up and down with a frown. “Necklace?”

“Right where it should be,” Naruto said as he lifted it out from underneath his shirt. “You’re not getting it back that easily, baa-chan.”

“Brat.” Tsunade’s tone was sharp but her eyes were fond and Naruto grinned back at her. “These are the three girls then?”

“Baa-chan, I’d like you to meet Uzume Sakura, Benten Ino, and Otohime Hinata.”

All three girls have a courteous bow after Naruto indicated them, but didn’t speak until the Uzumaki had finished. “It is an honor to learn from you, Tsunade-taichou.”

“That’s a Hyuuga, brat.”

Naruto cocked his head slightly to the side. “So?”

“You better be good at politics,” Tsunade said with a shake of her head.

Naruto gave a slow smile that made several council members shiver in their seats. “That won’t be a problem, baa-chan.”

 

 

[“We are a circle of strength guided by the light. Every day makes us stronger, every night brings forth the dawn. Eight shades under the sun: Susanoo, Uzume, Otohime, Koyane; eight colors less than one: Benten, Daikoku, Kagutsuchi, Tamoten. Blessed be that which illuminates the heaven and the guide upon our path, never may it fall.”]


End file.
